Along the road of life, sometimes you must steer toward a place that you'd rather avoid. I went to one of those places recently—the hospital for partial knee replacement surgery. It amazes me that this procedure is even possible. In a world where nobody has figured out how to make the plastic bags in cereal boxes easy to open and close, doctors can go into my leg to replace worn parts and then re-seal it.

I felt relief after this dreaded surgery, but only for a moment. No one had explained that an even more daunting challenge comes from two words that follow the procedure—physical therapy. When I fully regained my senses a couple days after surgery, I discovered that my brand new knee was nowhere close to being ready to use. I learned a lot about physical therapy the hard way—while in the midst of it. And during those long, painful weeks, I realized that strong parallels exist between the regimen of rehabilitation and ministry life.

What I Learned from Physical Therapy

One clear similarity is that therapy is hard—and so is ministry. For some people, that probably was a comforting statement to read, because ministry success attracts far more attention than its struggles. The truth is, when ministry is a challenge, that isn't an indication of failure or ineptitude. It's simply a reality. There will be tough times of conflict, disappointment, and loss—so ministry requires a heart and soul that are alive and full to the point of resiliency.

I also learned that therapy requires a personal commitment to work though pain and strain that no one can do for me—in other words, I must practice self-leadership to succeed. Same goes for ministry. My years in church work help me see this issue clearly: that the greatest gift I can bring to my ministry—kids, volunteers, and paid staff—is a heart that is full and surrendered to God. For me to live with God exclusively in the center takes constant attention that is punctuated with hard decisions. Self-leadership involves the options each of us face and forms the backdrop to important lessons we must learn about choices that involve perspective, pace, and load.

Perspective

The first challenge I faced in physical therapy involved knee flexibility. My lone goal in this area was critical: a 110-degree knee bend. During hours of painful stretching, a thought kept racing through my mind. I wondered whether I bend my knee—give all my worship—to God alone? The honest answer was no, which pushed me to dig deeper and look at my life from a new perspective. I realized that I must choose to worship only God, but many times I don't.

I had to start by admitting to what motivates me—an exercise that revealed my worship goes in many directions other than God. Sometimes I bow down to the approval of others, which gives them too much power in my life. Other times I kneel at the altar of image management—intentionally projecting the impression that all is well, even when that's a lie. Both of these idols stem from a fear of what people think about me—which can grip me so tight that sinful words, ideas, or actions spray out. I also saw that material things can capture my heart's desire.

Spend a few moments right now and ask God to help you take honest inventory of what tempts you to bend your knee, other than him. These idols are often found just underneath character flaws or seemingly innocent quirks, whether big or small.

Ill-placed knee bending is not a small issue to God. Jesus describes the greatest commandment in Mark 12:30, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." This means don't worship anything else—a directive also described in the first two commandments of the big ten. Fortunately, God wants to help us keep him at the center of our lives, so I now spend long stretches of time talking about this with him and asking what needs attention. I find that confessing to God that something or someone else receives my worship helps me gain healthy perspective and places him back as the exclusive center of my life. His response always is love, forgiveness, and fresh focus on how he sees me. The only approval, image, or identity I need to worry about is in God's eyes. I must choose to worship only him.

Pace

Once my knee started to bend, the next leg of therapy kicked in—aerobic conditioning. Increased circulation helps eliminate swelling, so I hobbled onto an elliptical training machine. I always started slowly, pumping my arms and doing the best I could with my partially replaced leg. But every time I reached the recommended speed and got into a smooth rhythm, something strange happened. For some reason, I became bold and started pushing a little harder and going a little faster. And faster. Eventually I would go too fast for my own good, and the machine would flash the message: Decrease speed to maintain target heart rate.

In ministry, I too often over-schedule—and that leads me to over-react. Then comes the belief that I must go to work early and stay late, with prayer time discarded. This eventually morphs into working constantly, which is not a sustainable pace. Soon I'm too tired to attend church and worship. Granted, there are exceptions to this, such as the extra hours necessary before a big event. The obvious problem emerges when this accelerated pace becomes a routine and not an exception. And even though my arms, legs, and mind can help me reach high speed, my heart is generally the first to feel the impact. I know I must choose to slow down and spend meaningful time with God, but when my pace is too fast, I don't.

Consider your pace of life for a few moments—and ask God to help you evaluate this area. Here's a clue—if you don't feel comfortable pausing and are inclined to hurry forward with your reading, speed may be a very significant issue for you.

When soaked with perspiration from running or working too fast, I remember Psalm 23 and how Jesus wants to lead me beside quiet waters to restore my soul. In other words, he wants to spend time in a quiet place with me. This means I must intentionally slow down—sometimes way down. If that calls for canceling commitments, then I do it. Every day I need to make time to be with God in meaningful ways, because I must relate to God before I can serve him.

And time with God brings clarity on what is a priority versus simply busyness. Read this carefully: Your personal relationship with God is a high priority. Your family is a high priority. Your friendships are high priorities. Your health is a high priority. Start the rest of your priority list after these. This prioritization helps develop the confidence to say "no" to activities so that your pace can become sustainable.

Load

The next big physical challenge waiting for me was strength training. My therapist instructed me to use one-and-one-half pound ankle weights during leg lifts. Back at home, I reasoned that I could get much stronger if I used four pound weights. Instead of a quick route to gaining strength, unfortunately, my over-ambitious effort resulted in immediate swelling and increased pain. I tried to do too much in therapy, and I tend to do the very same thing in ministry.

Ministry opportunities always sound so enticing during the initial discussions: More kids. More families. More lives changed. More, more, more! There's nothing wrong with striving to reach an ever-increasing number of people for Jesus—in fact, it's what we're supposed to do. The problem occurs when these opportunities are added to a full ministry plate, and nothing is taken off. That plate gets real heavy real fast, and holding it up becomes a strain. God loves anyone who devotes him or herself to doing his bidding, but he does not want that person to carry an unbearable ministry load. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, 30, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Isn't it consistent that he wouldn't want us to crush ourselves under the weight of ministry?

The burden is too heavy when there is a routine panic over not knowing how things will get accomplished. The burden is too heavy if projects are abandoned before they're complete so that new initiatives can begin. The burden is too heavy when volunteers leave because they feel overworked, resulting in a smaller team to shoulder the weight. When the burden becomes too heavy, then our attitude tanks, our heart strains, and our call to ministry clouds. I must choose to say yes to a reasonable workload that honors God, and no more.

Stop reading for a moment and think about the ministry load you carry—is it heavy or light? How does your ministry life impact your life outside of ministry? What impact should it have? Does ministry still bring you joy?

To avoid doing damage to yourself, don't be quick to accept fresh initiatives or new requests that are made of you or the whole ministry. Pray about it. Ask other people their opinions—especially your spouse or closest friends who know your current load. If you are a ministry director, gather a team of people who understand the realities of your ministry and think through the costs as well as the benefits together. When the "how" and "who" of an initiative aren't known, then resist the urge to say yes.

Another valuable exercise is to honestly assess whether everything you currently do aligns with your ministry mission, vision, values, strategy, and capacity. And if it doesn't, then be bold and say so. I believe it is more God-honoring to say "no" or "only if …" in these cases than it is to say "yes." Do you have any projects under consideration or in place that ought to be revisited?

Until I complete physical therapy, gone are my days of casually jumping into the car and running around town. Life has turned into being careful to simply step over sidewalk cracks. But that will eventually change, and I will appreciate the rehab road I traveled.

Wherever you are on your ministry journey, make sure that care for your heart and soul is a high priority. This happens when you choose to worship only God, choose to slow down life and spend time with God, and choose to say yes to a reasonable workload that honors God.

And along the way, make sure to take care of your knees!

(This article is taken from Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week by Sue Miller, Zondervan Publishing, 2004.)

Sue Miller has served for fourteen years as the executive director of Promiseland, the children's ministry at Willow Creek Community Church. Sue consults and trains children's leaders around the world.

Copyright © 2005 Promiseland.

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